Here Comes the Rain Again

Day 193

12 JULY 09

It's become a compulsion. If it's raining, I've got my camera pointed at it. I may have to find a way to wean myself off this one, though -- there are only so many ways you can shoot the rain.

This is the heavy rain and a couple leaves on my back patio. I like that I managed to capture a couple of the splashes.

Post-processing: noise reduction, sharpening, black and white adjustment layer using the neutral density filter, border addition.

Drops on the Web

DAY 144

24 MAY 09

I woke up in the morning and went outside to greet the day.

Nice fantasy -- that's just not the way I do things. I did wake up. I probably stumbled around a while. Eventually, I did go outside. Probably to take photos of my porch railing. I keep photographing it, thinking that one day I'll use it as my Project 365 shot. It hasn't happened so far, but I keep trying.

Anyway, a spider or other web-weaving creature had spun a web in the corner of my railing. It had rained the night before, and the threads of the web still held droplets of rain. Of course, I had to try and get photos.

I know it seems like I've been on a black & white kick lately. That's not necessarily true -- it's just the last few photos I posted looked better (in my opinion) in black and white. With this photo, the conversion cut out the distraction in the shot posed by the red brick.

Post-processing: noise reduction, sharpening, black & white conversion using the blue filter in Photoshop, border addition.

Headlights On When Raining

DAY 128

08 MAY 09

This was one of those happy accident photos. My husband and I were driving up to the North Georgia Mountains to look at go-karts, and were rained on most of the way up there. Not necessarily a bad thing, I'm still not sick of the wet stuff.

Anyway, I thought the sky looked kind of cool up ahead, so I decided to take a photo as we drove. Normally, when I want a photo of the raindrops on the windshield, I struggle to get the camera to focus on the drops instead of the background. With this photo, I wanted the background. Of course, the camera focused on the drops.

Murphy's Law, right?

I still think it turned out well, though. I like the way the background looks thrown out of focus. Those headlights kind of look like giant eyes. Giant shocked eyes. And the taillights, well, they kind of look UFO-ish.

The one thing I really don't like is the reflection of my dashboard in the windshield. But other than that, I like the shot.

Post-processing: noise reduction, sharpening, curves adjustment, mild saturation boost, border addition.

Light Up the Sky

DAY 100

10 APR 09

Major storms rolled through North Georgia, some were pretty destructive. Luckily, the worst of it missed us, but we did manage to see thunderstorms with heavy rain. I thought it'd be fun to try and get a shot of the rain on my patio lit just by the patio lights, and I ended up with a purely-by-chance shot.

Just as I hit the shutter, lightning lit up the sky. I had a handful of very dark pictures before this one and a handful of very dark pictures after this one. This one was my favorite.

Post-production: noise reduction, sharpening, border addition.

Dot Dot Dot

DAY 91

01 APR 09

Yes, I've been posting a lot of rain-related pictures lately. That's good news for my area, as it means we've had enough rain for me to take a lot of rain-related pictures. It was recently reported that all this rain may have actually pulled us out of the worst of our seemingly ever-enduring drought.

These raindrops were clinging to the side of my truck. They kind of reminded me of that candy...do you know what I'm talking about? It was a candy that was little dots stuck to a sheet of paper. I'm sure they exist/existed, though I don't know their name.

I also found it interesting that when I zoomed in to a 100% crop, it was clear that each little drop reflected the woods next to my house.

Post-processing: noise reduction, sharpening, black & white conversion, border addition.

Got the Drop

DAY 86

27 MAR 09

This photo does bear some similarity to my shot for Day 74 titled It's Raining Again -- they were both taken on rainy days, both pictures were taken of water on glass, and both were taken through the glass with me on the dry side. The subjects are similar, but there is a difference in execution.

My Day 74 shot was taken through the passenger-side window of my truck. This photo? Through my sun/moonroof. Plus, this was a one-in-a-million type shot for me; I actually caught the raindrop hitting the glass! Had I not caught that, you'd be looking at a very different photo for Day 86.

Post-processing: noise reduction, sharpening, curves adjustment, cropping (I caught part of the edge of the sun/moonroof so I cropped it out), and border addition.

It's Raining Again

DAY 74

15 MAR 09

Two things have become abundantly clear to me. First, taking my Project 365 photos has become a habit. I like that. It means there's a good chance I'll be sticking with the project.

Second, I'm not very good at updating daily. While I'm taking photos daily, I'm not downloading them daily. I'm not processing photos daily. I'm not posting photos daily. What I am doing, however, is often playing catch-up. Just not daily.

I hope you'll bear with me on my catch-up days.

Day 74 brought more rain. Some folks around here have taken to complaining about the wet stuff; I still enjoy it. Does that make me weird? This photo was a little experiment with the raindrops on my truck window. While I wish the focus had been just a bit sharper, overall, I'm pleased with the result.

Post-processing: noise reduction, sharpening, curves adjustment, border addition.

House. Upside Down.

DAY 49

18 FEB 09

Day 49 brought more much-needed rain for drought-stricken Atlanta. Sometimes it seems like we're always getting rain, but the news only presents more doom and gloom with regard to our drought condition. While I'm not complaining about the rain, I am getting tired of hearing how horrible conditions are.

Could just be my mood, though.

At any rate, during a break in the rain, I came home from my daily errands. As I got out of my truck, I realized one of the trees in the front yard had little bitty raindrops hanging off each and every branch. It almost made the tree look diamond-dipped, and that was way cool. I tried to capture what I saw, but the picture didn't work, darn it all. It just looked like a big, wet tree. So I decided instead to try concentrating on the individual drops.

I was pretty excited when I downloaded this photo, because I saw something that I couldn't see in the LCD when I took the picture -- a reflection in the drop. It's my house! Upside down! How cool is that?

Yes, I'm easily entertained.

Post-production included sharpening, noise reduction, curves adjustment, and border addition.

Raindrops Keep Falling

DAY 33

02 FEB 09

Yup. Rain's still exciting to us North Georgians. As long as we have drought, we'll happy dance at the sight of rain. This shot in particular is the one I was going for on Day 28 when I got the reflection shot instead.

I like the circles. I like the puddle. I like the hint of concrete in the foreground. I like the out of focus What the heck is that? reflection in the water. For me, this shot just works.

Post processing on this one included conversion to black & white in Adobe Camera Raw, noise reduction, sharpening, a curves adjustment and contrast boost, and the addition of the filter "Anvil" in Virtual Photographer. And my usual simple black border, too.

Upon Reflection...

DAY 28

28 JAN 09

Rain, rain, and more rain! In a drought-stricken area, all that water falling from the sky is exciting, even if the rain is sparse enough to avoid the drops by stepping to the right.

On Day 28, I came home from...somewhere...and went into the backyard. I had to enter the house through the back door since my dogs were in the garage (they're old and they don't like getting wet). Anyway, as I walked across the patio, I saw a couple of great puddles. My plan was to see if I could capture a raindrop hitting the puddle, the splash of explosion of water on water. But when I pointed the camera, what appeared in my viewfinder was much, much better.

I still got those raindrops, but even better, I got an amazing reflection. The images of some great naked wintertime trees stared back at me from the water's surface, and I knew I had my Project 365 shot.

Post-processing on this one was minimal, just my usual noise reduction, sharpening, and curves adjustment.